SVC Concert Series to Present Pianist George Li Jan. 21

Pianist George Li will be the fifth presentation in the Saint Vincent College Concert Series stage at 8 p.m. Saturday, January 21 in the Robert S. Carey Student Center Performing Arts Center.

George Li will perform Franz Joseph Haydn’s Sonata in C Major, Hob. XVI:50; Robert Schumann’s Abegg Variations, Op. 1; Bela Bartok’s Sonata; three Claude Debussy preludes; and Franz Schubert’s Fantasy in C Major, D. 760, (“Wanderer”). This represents a completely new program from the one announced earlier in August.

Sixteen-year-old YCA Winner, pianist George Li is coming to Saint Vincent College fresh from his New York debut in November presented by the Peter Marino Concert as a winner of the 2010 Young Concert Artists International Auditions. YCA also presented in November his first Washington, D.C. appearance at the Kennedy Center.

Last June, Li gave a performance at the White House in an evening honoring Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany. He was awarded a 2011 Gilmore Young Artist Award. This season he will perform at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the Irving S. Gilmore International Keyboard Festival, the Vancouver Recital Society at Shriver Hall (MD) and the Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Germany). George Li will appear as soloist with orchestras including the Akron Symphony, and in a re-engagement with the Spartanburg Philharmonic. He has performed with the Xiamen Philharmonic in China, the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra in Venezuela, the Boston and Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestras, and with “I Solisti di Perugia” in Italy. As First Prize winner of the 2010 Cooper Competition at Oberlin Conservatory, he appeared as soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra.

George Li is a member of the New England Conservatory’s Vivace Trio, which has been heard on “From the Top” on NPR and WNET, and has performed for members of the U.S. Congress at the Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. His first public performance was at Boston’s Steinway Hall at the age of ten. At ages six and seven, he won First Prize in the Massachusetts Music Teachers Association Competition.

He attends the Walnut Hill School for the Arts and studies piano at the New England Conservatory with Wha Kyung Byun.

Admission is $25 and tickets can be ordered online at http://concertseries.stvincent.edu/ or by calling 724 805-2565. They will also be available at the door.

Single tickets, flex passes, group rates and student discounts are also available.

A dinner/concert package, A Classic Evening at Saint Vincent, is offered for $50 with advance reservations.

This performance is supported in part by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.